A LETTER FROM DANTON T< 
MARIE ANTOINETTE 



Carl Becker 



^ 



REPRINTED FROM THE 



g^m^tian gi^totial §mnv 



VOLS. XXVI., No. 4, and XXVll., NO. i 



OCTOBER, i()2i 






A LETTER FROM DANTON TO MARIE ANTOINETTE 



Reprinted from The American Historical Review, Vol. XXVII, No. i, Oct., 1921. 



A LETTER FROM DANTON TO MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Among the papers of the late Andrew D. White, Professor 
George L. Burr found a photographic reproduction of a letter, which 
seems to be in the hand of Danton, addressed to Marie Antoinette 
at the Conciergerie. This brief and curious letter reads as follows : 

A la citoyenne Marie Antoinette Ci-devt Reine de France a la Con- 
ciergerie a Paris Citoyenne vuus mettrez sur votre porta ces mots — 
Unite indivisibilite de la Repub'ique liberte egalite fraternite ou la 
mort Signe Danton. 

Marie Antoinette was confined in the Conciergerie from Au- 
gust 2 to October 16, 1793. The words "4 aout ", written by an- 
other hand in the margin, give the probable approximate date of the 
letter. At that time Danton was president of the Convention; and 
the recent transfer of the queen from the Temple to the Con- 
ciergerie meant that the Convention had decided to bring her to 
trial, which in turn meant that her execution within a short time 
was practically a foregone conclusion. Under these circumstances, 
why should Danton write to Marie Antoinette? Why should he 
wish her to place this symbol of the Republic on her door? Were 
these words on the door intended to serve in some conspiracy to 
rescue the queen? Were they intended to serve as a protection 
against outrage or assassination at the hands of the mob? Was 
the letter forged by the enemies of Danton for the purpose of ruin- 
ing him? What, in any case, became of the letter? Did the queen 
receive it? Was it used against Danton at his trial? Is the orig- 
mal still in existence? Is it well known to collectors and historians? 

I. 

It may be said at once that the letter was practically unknown 
to contemporaries of the Revolution. It was apparently unknown 
to modern historians until 1891, when Eugene Welvert printed it 
in his La Saisie des Papiers du Conventionnel Courtois. Since then 
only three writers, so far as I can find, have quoted the letter, all 
of them taking it from Welvert. All four of these printed repro- 
ductions of the letter are inaccurate. The history of the letter is 
interesting, therefore, because it 'will show why so little is known 
about it, besides furnishing some preliminary data for its further 
explanation. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 25 

The letter was a single small sheet, folded and sealed, and appar- 
ently sent by post. It bears three circular red stamps. One is com- 
posed of the letters P. B. G., a second of the letters P. D., and the 
third of the number 4. Upon the stamp P. D. is superimposed a 
black triangular stamp P. The organization of the Post Office at 
that time included a Bureau General, and several subordinate bu- 
reaus, one of which was the "' Bureau pour la Distribution des 
Lettres Chargees, Adressees a Paris "} Gallois, discussing the or- 
ganization of the Post Office at an earlier date, says that " letters 
were stamped with a printed stamp peculiar to each bureau from 
which they were sent. Each of these bureaus was designated by a 
letter of the alphabet represented on the special stamp which it 
used."^ It seems reasonable to conclude that the P. B. G. stood for 
" Poste : Bureau General ", the P. D. for " Pour Distribution ", and 
the superimposed P. for " Paris ". The number 4 probably indicates 
the charge, which was four sous for simple letters of one quarter- 
ounce or less, within the limits of a single department.^ A fifth 
stamp on the letter, somewhat illegible, appears to be " 6" ""=." Six- 
ieme Levee suggests itself ; but, unfortunately for this reading, there 
were at most only three collections daily at the time.* 

Although it seems evident, from these marks, that the letter went 
through the Post Office, this very fact, if it be one, raises a signifi- 
cant question. If the letter was a forgery, intended to ruin Danton, 
one can well understand that it should have been sent by post. But 
if the letter is genuine, if Danton wrote the letter and wished to 
convey it to the queen, one asks why he should have intrusted it to 
the post. Marie Antoinette was carefully guarded at the Concier- 
gerie; so much so that in September a note smuggled in, concealed 
in a bouquet of flowers, was nevertheless discovered by the guards.' 
It might seemingly be taken for granted by anyone, certainly by 
Danton, that all letters sent through the Post Office addressed to the 

^Almanac National (1793), P- 483- 

2 La Poste et les Moyens de Communication (Paris, 1894), p. 120. 

3 Decree of August, 1791. Collection Generate des Lois, etc. (Paris, 179.2'', 
V. 934. " Seront taxees comme lettres simples celles sans enveloppes et dont le 
poids n'excedera un quart d'once." Decree of July 23, 1793. Collection Gen- 
erate des Lois, etc. (Paris, An II.), XV. iSo. 

i Almanac Royal (1792), p. 631. Of the two words at the top of the second 
half of the sheet, one, which I take to be inique, seems to be in the hand of 
Fouquier; the other may be perfide, or, what seems to me more likely, the first 
four letters of the signature of L. Lecointre. 

5 The incident was known as " La Conspiration de I'Oeillet ". Revue des 
Questions Historiques, XXXIX. 54S ; Campardon, Marie Antoinette a la Con- 
ciergerie, p. 3; Tuetey, Sources de I'Histoire de Paris, vol. IX. p. 393, no. 1303. 



2 6 Carl Becker 

queen would as a matter of course be intercepted and turned over 
to the government." 

Such in fact seems to have been the fate of this letter. In the 
first place there is no evidence that the queen ever received it. 
There are several contemporary accounts of the queen's life at the 
Conciergerie written by people whose duty it was to guard or serve 
her,, and the subject has been minutely investigated by historians 
since. ^ None of these accounts, contemporary or secondary, men- 
tions this letter, or any letter which might have been this one, as 
having been either received by the queen or later discovered among 
her effects. In the second place, evidence that the letter was turned 
over to the government is contained in the letter itself ; for across 
the face of the letter we find the personal signatures of five men: 
A. Q. Fouquier, Massieu, Legot, Gufifroy, L. Lecointre. The sig- 
nature of Fouquier indicates that the letter was turned over to the 
Revolutionary TribunalT) Besides, the last letter written by Marie 
Antoinette, the famous " testament " addressed to her sister Madame 
Elizabeth, which also bears the signature of Fouquier, we know to 
have been turned over to the Tribunal.^ This letter the queen 
entrusted to Bault, the concierge, to deliver. That evening Bault 
said to his wife : " Your poor Queen has written ; she gave me her 
letter, but I cannot send it to its address. It is necessary to carry 
it to Fouquier."" It thus seems to have been an understood thing 
that letters written by the c^ueen were to be carried to Fouquier. 
The presumption is that it was equally understood that all letters 
written to her were to be disposed of in the same way. 

Fouquier-Tinville thus came. into possession of the letter, in all 
probability before the trial of Danton, since the death of Marie 
Antoinette fell on October i6, 1793, and the trial of Danton was 
not until April 2-5, 1794. If this may be assumed, it is difficult to 

6 A decree of May g, 1793, provided for the examination by agents of the 
Commune of all letters at the Post Office addressed to persons whose names 
appeared on the list of emigres. This list included most suspects, whether they 
had actually emigrated or not. Collection Generate des Lois, etc. (Paris, An II.), 
XV. 307. 

^ Cf. contemporary narratives given by Lenotre, La Captivite et la Mort de 
Marie Antoinette , pp. 215 ff ; and the documents used by Carapardon in his care- 
ful study, Marie Antoinette a la Conciergerie. For the bibliography of works deal- 
ing with Marie Antoinette at the Conciergerie, see Tourneux. Bibliographie de 
I'Histoire de Paris, vol. IV., nos. 21209-21254. 

8 Dunoyer, Fouquier-Tinville, p. 4 ; Lenotre, La Captivite et la Mort de 
Marie Antoinette, pp. 386, 387. 

9 Recit Exact des Derniers Moniens de . . . la Reine . . . par la Dame Bault 
(Paris, 1817), p. 15. Printed in full in Lenotre, La Captivite, etc., pp. 277, 290. 
Quoted in Pallet, Lo Conciergerie, p. 196. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 27 

suppose that he did not make use of it as evidence against Danton. 
It was no easy matter to bring the jury to the point of convicting 
Danton; and in the absence of definite evidence of guilt, this letter 
would have been precisely suited to the purpose of convincing the 
jury. The trial of Danton has been exhaustively studied by his- 
torians having access to all the available evidence ;'^° but no one has 
thus far found in the sources any explicit reference to the Danton 
letter. In fact, of all those who have written about the trial of 
Danton, no one except Mathiez appears to be aware that such a 
letter is, or ever was, in existence. Mathiez quotes the letter, al- 
though inaccurately, and says it was " perhaps " one of the " secret 
documents " which were shown to the jury on the last day of the 
trial. ^^ Our knowledge of these " secret documents " rests upon the 
statement of one of the clerks of the Tribunal, N. J. Paris, who 
afterwards, at the trial of Fouquier-Tinville, deposed that on the 
last day of Danton's trial one of the jurors, Topino-Lebrun, " me 
dit qu'Herman et Fouquier les avaient engages a declarer qu'ils 
etaient suffisamment instruits et que, pour les determiner, ils avaient 
peint les accuses comme des scelerats, des conspirateurs, et leur 
avaient presente une lettre qu'ils disaient venir de letranger et 
qu'etait adressee a Danton "}- Such a letter as this has never been 
discovered; and it may be that the letter which Herman and Fou- 
quier showed to the jury was this one of Danton to Marie Antoi- 
nette, which Paris later, at the trial of Fouquier, remembered as 
having been, or as having been reported to him as being (there is 
no evidence that Paris saw the letter, whatever it was), a letter from 
" abroad addressed to Danton ". 

However that may be (I shall return to this point presently), it 
is certain that Fouquier had the letter before or after the trial of 
Danton, since it bears his signature. It will be remembered that 
there are four other signatures on the letter : Massieu, Legot, Guf- 

1" Cf. the careful study of Robinet, Le Proces des Dantonistes (Paris, 1879), 
based upon the documents, most of which are printed in the appendix; Beesley. 
Life of Danton (L-ondon, 1899) ; Belloc, Danton (London, 1S99) ; Madelin, Dan- 
ton (Paris, 1914) ; Qaretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile DesmouHns, £.tude sur 
les Dantonistes (Paris, 1875); Mathiez, Danton et la Paix (Paris, 1919). For 
the literature of the Danton trial, see Tuetey, Sources, vol. XI., p. 126, nos. 
249-877. 

11 Danton et la Paix, p. 247. 

12 " Declaration de Nicolas-Joseph Paris, dit Fabricius, au Proces de Fou- 
quier-Tinville." Printed in full in Dunoyer, Fouquier-Tinville, pp. 322, 330 ; and 
also, with slight verbal differences, in Robinet, Proces des Dantonistes, pp. 590, 
593. See especially, on this matter, Joseph Reinach, " La Piece Secrete du Proces 
Danton ", in his Essais de Politique et d'Histoire, p. 333. 



2 8 Carl Becker 

.■ froy, L. Lecointre. These four men were members of the Conven- 
V tion ; andjthree of them were appointed, 23 Thermidor, members of 
a commission to examine the " papiers de Robespierre, Saint- Just, 
Lebas . . . et autre comphces . . . et en f aire un rapport a la Con- 
vention Nationale"." Fouquier-Tinvilfe was arrested on the 14 
Thermidor, at which time his papers were placed under seals ;^* and 
it is probable that the commission appointed on the 23d to examine 
the papers of Robespierre " et autre complices " took over those of 
Fouquier also. Thus the Danton letter, found among the papers 
either of Robespierre or of Fouquier, passed into the hands of the 
commission. Of this commission, the secretary or recorder was 
E. B. Courtois, to whom the commission turned over the papers that 
came into its possession, in order that he might prepare a report to 
the Convention. Courtois spent some months in preparing his re- 
port, which was finally presented January 5, i795-^° The report 
quotes at length from the papers in Courtois's possession, but it does 
not mention the Danton letter. The reason is obvious. Courtois 
was a friend of Danton, and the purpose of the report was to make 

IS Monite^tr, 24 Thermidor, An II., no. 324, vol. X., p. 1323. The full com- 
mission appointed on the 23d was made up of L. Lecointre, Bourdon de I'Oise, 
Charlier, Guffroy, Cales, Beaupre, Perrin des Vosges, Massieu, Clausel, Gauthier, 
Ch. Duval, Audonin. The name of Legot, one of the four whose names are on 
the Danton letter, is not in the list ; but it is probable that some changes in the 
personnel of the commission were made. E. B. Courtois, the secretary of the 
commission, said in 1S16 that " apres la mort de Robespierre, il y eut succes- 
sivement deux Commissions de nommes. ... La premiere, n'ayant pas, par esprit 
de parti, repondu a la confiance de I'Assemblee il en fut nomme une seconde 
dont je fis partie." Lenotre, La Captivite et la Mort de Marie Antoinette, p. 391 ; 
Welvert, Lendemains Revolutionnaires , p. 282. I have not found any record of 
the appointment of two commissions ; but that there were changes in personnel 
is confirmed by the pamphlet. Discours Prononce par Robespierre a la Con- 
vention dans la Seance du 8 Thermidor. In this pamphlet it is stated that the 
manuscript was found among the papers of Robespierre, by the commission, and 
that it was ordered printed by the commission. This statement is signed : Guffroy, 
president ; Lecointre, Clausel, Cales, Massieu, J. Espert. The last name, Espert, 
like that of Legot on the Danton letter, is not among the list of commissioners 
appointed on the 23d. That Legot became a member of the commission some time 
after its original creation is evident enough, since his signature appears not 
only on the Danton letter, but also on a number of other documents found 
among the papers of Robespierre or Fouquier. Cf. Lenotre, op. cit., p. 384- 

14 Dunoyer, op. cit., pp. 149, IS5- Moniteur, 15 Thermidor, An II. (Aug. 
2, 1794), no- .3IS. 

'i-^ Moniteur, An III., no. 108, The report is printed in nos. 150-152, 154-162. 
It was also printed separately as a pamphlet: Rapport fait au Norn de la Com- 
mission chargee de VExamen des Papiers trouv^s cites Robespierre et^ses Com- 
plices, par E. B. Courtois (Paris, Nivose, An III.) ; printed also as the introduc- 
tion to Papiers Inedits trouves chez Robespierre, etc. (Paris, 1828, 3 vols.). 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 29 

a strong case against Robespierre and his associates, whereas the 
Danton letter would rather have been a point in Robespierre's favor. 
In fact, after the death of Robespierre, all of those who are known 
to have seen the Danton letter, with the one exception of Fouquier- 
Tinville,^" had sufficient reasons for saying nothing about it, with 
the result that there seems to be no mention of the letter in all the 
contemporary literature of the Revolution. 

Not until 1816 do I find any mention of it. On January 25 of 
that year, E. B. Courtois, finding himself, as one of the regicides, 
in imminent danger of exile, wrote to Councillor of State Becquey 
a letter in which he tried to make his peace with the restored Bour- 

16 Why Fouquier did not call for the Danton letter in his own defense is 
an interesting question. One of ^he chief charges against him at his trial was 
that of having forced the condemnation of Danton without evidence. One would 
expect him to make some reference to the Danton letter. Perhaps he had for- 
gotten it. In general, his defense consisted mainly in saying that he had obeyed 
orders, and was not responsible. For a full account of Fouquier's trial, see 
Dunoyer, Fonqitier-Tinville. Other men whose interest it was to make known 
the Danton letter were Barere, CoUot d'Herbois, and Billaud-Vairenne. In their 
long and losing fight after the fall of Robespierre, particularly in connection with 
the denunciation of Lecointre, and the subsequent rehabilitation of Lecointre's 
charges by the Commission of Twenty-One, they had need of every fact 
which would help to justify the execution of Danton, which was a capital point 
in the charges against the members of the old committee. All three men de- 
fended themselves repeatedly, both in the Convention and in printed pamphlets. 
Their defense, in respect to the execution of Danton, was essentially that Danton 
was a traitor. "If the execution of Danton is a crime", said Billaud, "I accuse 
myself of it; for I was. the first to denounce him. I saw that if this man existed, 
liberty would perish. If he were alive he would be the rallying point for all the 
counter-revolutionists." Les Crimes de Sept Membres des Anciens Conntes, 
p. 25. Here was the obvious opportunity to refer to the Danton letter, if Billaud 
knew of its existence. He does not refer to it. nor do any of the others, so far 
as I can find. For the Lecointre denunciation and debate, see Moniteur, 14-15 
Fructidor, An II. (Aug. 29-30, 1794), nos. 344, 345. The Commission of Twenty- 
One was appointed Dec. 27, 1794, to examine the conduct of Billaud, Collot, 
Barere, and Vadier. Id., 9 Nivose, An III. Saladin reported for the com- 
mission on the 12 Ventose (Mar. 2, 1795). Id., 14 Ventose, An III., no. 164. 
The charges were discussed in the Convention on 4-8 Germinal. Id., 7-12 
Germinal, An III., nos. 1S7-192. There is also considerable pamphlet literature 
on this matter: Rapport an nom de la Commission des Vingt-un (Paris, 28 Ven- 
tose, An III.) : Reponse des Membres des Deux Anciens Comites aux Pieces com- 
muniqnees par la Commission des Vingt-un ; Reponse de J. N. Billaud a Laurent 
Lecointre; J. M. Collot a ses Collegues, Reflexions rapides sur I'Imprime Publie 
par Lecointre centre Sept Membres des Anciens Comites; Defense de I. M. Col- 
lot Reprcsentant du Peuple; Seconde Suite aux Sclaircissemens Necessaires, 
donnes par J. M. Collot; Discours fait a la Convention Nationale par J. M. 
Collot . . . 4 Germinal, An III. ; Discours prononce par Robert Lindet . . . sur 
les Denonciations portees contre I'Ancient ComitS de Salut Public et le Rapport 
de la Commission des 21. 



3° Carl Becker 

bon government. In this letter he asserted that he had in his pos- 
session certain documents and articles of peculiar interest to the 
royal family; documents which, he says, he extracted from the 
Robespierre papers in his possession in 1794, and which he had 
secretly and carefully kept ever since with the intention, at the 
proper time, of restoring them to the Bourbon family. These docu- 
ments and articles, of which there were ten, he enumerated and 
described in his letter to Becquey. The first and most important 
was the famous last letter of Marie Antoinette to her sister Madame 
Elizabeth. The last one, number 10, Courtois describes as " une 
petite lettre, avec la pretendue signature de Danton, adressee a la 
Reine, ainsi congue: ' Citoyenne, Mettez sur voire parte ces mots: 
Unite, indivisibilite de la Republique, liberte, egalite, fraternite ou 
la mart. Signe Danton.' "^' Courtois did not have the letter before 
him when he wrote. He quoted the Danton letter from memory, 
or from a copy ; and it is important to note that he quoted it incor- 
rectly: he makes it read mettez sur voire parte, instead of vous 
metirez sur votre parte. 

Courtois did not succeed in saving himself from exile ; and mean- 
time his residence was raided by the police, who carried off all his 
papers, a great mass of documents which he had used in 1794 for 
preparing his report to the Convention, including the ten pieces he 
had enumerated in his communication to the Councillor Becquey. 
These ten pieces, all relating to Marie Antoinette, were turned over 
to Louis XVIII. The king at once made known the discovery of 
the last letter of Marie Antoinette to her sister, which was ordered 
read in all the churches, and of which engraved copies were made 
and presented to the members of the Chamber of Peers.^^ But the 
Danton letter was not published or made known. No member of 
the Bourbon family would wish to have it known that Marie Antoi- 
nette had been, or might be supposed to have been, under obligation 
to Danton. The letter was a curiosity, no doubt, and one which 
might well be given, as such, to some friend who cared for that 
kind of thing ; and in fact it seems that the king gave the letter to 
one of the peers, in whose family archives it remained until it was 

17 This letter from Courtois to Becquey remained in the archives, appar- 
ently unknown to historians, until printed in 1891 by Eugene Welvert in his 
book La Saisie des Papiers du Conventionnel Courtois, p. 17. It is given in full 
by Lenotre, who took it from Welvert, m his La CapHvite et la Mart de Marie 
Antoinette, p. 384 ; and in Welvert, Lendemains Revolutionnaires, p. 268. 

18 Welvert, La Saisie des Papiers du Conventionnel Courtois, pp. 21, 27; 
Lenotre, op. cit., p. 393; Campardon, op. cit., p. 251. The Cornell University 
Library has the letter in a printed broadside of 1816, and also one of the en- 
straved copies of the original. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 31 

purchased for an American collector, the late John Boyd Thacher. 
As part of the Thacher Collection it was exhibited in 1905 at the 
Lenox branch of the New York Public Library, and is described 
and accurately quoted in the printed catalogue of that exhibition.^" 
It vfras Mr. Thacher who had the photographic reproduction made 
which Professor Burr found among the papers of Mr. White. The 
original is now in Washington, the Thacher Collection having been 
presented recently to the Library of Congress. 

Under these circumstances it is not astonishing that the Danton 
letter should have long remained practically unknown. So far as 
I can learn few historians have seen the original. Apparently, 
no French historian knew of the existence of such a letter until 
1891, when Eugene Welvert printed the inaccurate copy of it which 
Courtois made in 1816 in his letter to the Councillor of State Bec- 
qygy 20 Since then the letter has been quoted by three different 
historians, Lenotre,^^ Blottiere,^^ and Albert Mathiez.-^ Blottiere 
assures his readers that the original still exists and that facsimiles 
of it have been circulated. Mathiez says that he has seen a fac- 
simile. However that may be, all three writers, including Mathiez, 
have evidently taken the letter from Welvert, for they quote it in 
part only, without the address ; they quote it inaccurately, making it 
read mettes instead of vous mettres; and they quote it with certain 
punctuation-marks although the original is without punctuation : 
that is to say, they all quote the letter exactly as they found it given 
in Welvert, who in turn gave it as he found it in the Courtois letter 
of 1816. 

II 

Such briefly is the history of the Danton letter. What was its 
purpose? Was Danton involved in some plot to rescue the Queen 

is Otdlines of the French Revohition told in Autographs exhibited at the 
Lenox Branch of the New York Public Library, March 20, 1905. No. 2S0. 
The Danton letter, according to the description here given, " came into the pres- 
ent collection from a Ducal house in France, the first Duke receiving it from 
the hands of Louis XVIII. in 1816 ". Mrs. Thacher does not remember any- 
thing more than is related above about the circumstances under which her 
husband came into possession of the letter. To Mr. W. G. Leiand, who has 
compared the photographic reproduction with the original, and read the proofs of 
this article, I am under obligations for many valuable suggestions. 

20 La Saisie des Papiers du Conventionnel Courtois (Paris, 1891), p. 17. 
Welvert printed the letter of Courtois again in 1907, in his Lendemains Revolu- 
tionnaires, p. 268. 

21 La Captivite et la Mart de Marie Antoinette (Paris, 1897), p. 3S4. 

'22 In an article on " Courtois et la Duchesse de Choiseul ", Annales Revolu- 



33- 
'^^ Danton et la Paix (Paris, 1919), p. 247. 



32 Carl Becker 

from the Conciergerie ? Or was his purpose merely to guard, her 
against anticipated assassination at the hands of the mob? Let us 
consider the first of these suppositions. 

That there were royaHst plots to rescue the queen is well known. 
In July, 1793, there was a carefully worked-out plot known to have 
been directed by Baron Batz, and involving among others a certain 
Michonis, a police commissioner on guard at the Temple. On the 
evening of the day fixed for executing the plot, a note was found 
at the door of the Temple in these words : " Alichonis trahira cette 
nuit. Veillez." Michonis was at once replaced by Simon, and the 
scheme had to be abandoned. It was partly as a consequence of 
this discovery that Marie Antoinette was removed from the Temple 
to the Conciergerie on August 2. In September and October vari- 
ous schemes were in hand, under the direction of Count Rougeville, 
for removing the queen from the Conciergerie. All these efforts 
have been subject to a good deal of special investigation; but no one 
has brought to light anything in the nature of specific contemporary 
evidence which implicates Danton in the Batz plot or in the schemes 
of Rougeville.-" At the time of his trial Danton was of course 
charged with " royalism ". This was the stock charge; but in the 
case of Danton the only specific evidence publicly brought forward 
was a passage in a letter from the Spanish ambassador at Venice to 
Godoy, dated July 31, 1793. The passage is as follows: "The 
Commune of Paris pretends that ati agent of the Prince of Coburg 
has communicated with the Queen, that Danton and Lacroix, who 

2^ For a careful study of these plots, see Lecestre, " Les Tentatives d'Eva- 
sion de Marie Antoinette au Temple et a la Conciergerie ", Revue des Ques- 
tions Historiques, XXXIX. 510-568; cf. Campardon, Marie Antoinette a la 
Conciergerie, ch. I., pp. 139-161, 181-207; Robinet, Proces des Dantonisfes, p. 
311 S. filie Lacoste, in his report to the Convention, June 13, 1794, on the Batz 
conspiracy, gave a list of some thirty-five people supposed to be implicated with 
Batz. He mentions the Danton-Lacroix faction as one of the " branches de 
celle dont nous venons vous devoiler les forfaits ". No proof of this is offered 
except the statement that Danton was known to have met Batz frequently. Rap- 
port sur la Conspiration de Balz, pp. 6, 9. Moniteur, 27 Prairial, An II., no. 
267. Baron Batz denied ever having seen Danton. " Je n'ai vu de ma vie la 
figure de Danton, ni celle de Lacroix. Je n'ai eu relations quelconques, directes 
ni indirectes avec eux." La Conjuration de I'&tranger et le Baron Bats, quoted 
in Robinet, Proces des Dantonistes, p. 325. In recent years Albert Mathiez, the 
valiant defender of Robespierre, has had a sharp eye out for every kind of 
evidence which might discredit Danton's loyalty to the Revolution. In -two 
recent books he has gathered together all this fragmentary evidence ; but it 
seems to me that his conclusions reach farther than the facts, and in any case he 
does not seem to have advanced any specific evidence to prove that Danton was 
implicated in the Batz or Rougeville plots. Cf. La Revolution et les Utrangers, 
ch. XI. ; Danton et la Paix, chs. VII., VIII. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 33 

were of the Mountain party, have become Girondins and have had 
conferences with her Majesty."-'' Saint-Just, in his denunciation 
of Danton before the Convention at the time of the latter's arrest, 
refers to this letter f^ but if the Revolutionary Tribunal had further 
evidence of Danton's compUcity in the royalist plots it did not pro- 
duce it. 

It was not until after the Revolution that we find this charge of 
" royalism " in its most circumstantial form. The unprinted " Mem- 
oirs " of Boissy d'Anglas, written probably about 1798 during the 
period of his exile after the 18 Fructidor, contain this passage : 

It is very true that when Danton was arrested he had in hand the 
project of forcing the Temple, of seizing the son of Louis XVI., of pro- 
claiming him king and of presenting him to the people throughout the 
city. They were to name a council of regency of which Danton was to 
be the chief, and the principles of humanity which have reigned since 
the 9 Thermidor would have obtained from this period. . . . Fabre 
d'Eglantine, Heraut [Herault], Danton, Lacroix, and Camille Desmou- 
lins were the authors of this project. Danton was to have presented 
the child to the people and to the army. The Committee of Public 
Safety learned of the project, and Saint-Just said a few words about it 
in his report without, however, entering into details. Before this period 
it was the Duke of Orleans whom these same men wished to place on the 
throne.^' 

The " Memoirs " of Boissy d'Anglas were written from memory 
at a time when he had become an advocate of moderate constitu- 
tional government ; and the passage quoted is obviously inspired by 
the desire to throw on Robespierre the odium of the Terror and the 
responsibility for delaying the establishment of a more moderate 
system. His version of Danton's royalism is no more than the old 
charge which was current at the time of Danton's arrest — the story 
which Boissy, like every one else, was familiar with at the time. A 
brief history of this story will show, I think, that the charge of 
" royalism " which was current at the time of Danton's execution, 
and which Boissy revived in 1798, rested upon fragile foundations. 

The origin of this story takes us back to the insurrection of 
August 10, 1792. Gouverneur Morris, writing to Jefiferson, Decem- 
ber 21, 1792, says: "Shortly after the loth of August, I had infor- 

25 The original, in Spanish, was found among the papers of Robespierre. 
The letter is printed, in Spanish and French, in Papiers Inedits trouves chez 
Robespierre (Paris, 1S28), III. 388. The extract is quoted in Robinet, Proces 
des Daiitonistes, p. 312. 

^^ Moniteur, 12 Germinal, An II. (Apr. i, 1794), no. 192, p. 779. Given 
also in Robinet, Proces des Dantonistes, p. 48S. 

"1 Infermcdiaire des Chercheiirs, Mar. 30, 1901, p. 529; La Revolution 
Frangaise, XL. 460. 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXVII. — 3. 



34 Carl Becker 

mation on which you may rely, that the plan of Danton was to 
obtain the resignation of the King, to get himself appointed Chief 
of a Council of Regency, composed of his creatures, during the. 
minority of the Dauphin. This idea has never, I beHeve, been 
wholly abandoned. "^^ All this, it will be remembered, relates to the 
tenth of August, 1792, before the Republic had been established, 
before the king had been executed, when everyone was asking what 
was to be done with him. The idea of a regency was not an un- 
common one at that time; and it is quite possible that Danton was 
in favor of it. But a year later the situation had wholly changed. 
The Republic had been established,' the king had been executed, the 
Terror was the order of the day. In August, 1792, a man might 
well be a patriot and still openly advocate a regency ; but to do so 
in August, 1793, would have been regarded as the blackest of 
treasons. Yet the project of a regency, originally attributed to 
Danton in August, 1792, continued to be associated with his name 
throughout the Revolution. 

On December 3, 1793, Robespierre throws a curious light on the 
status of the story at that time. That evening, at the Jacobin Club, 
Danton was attacked by Coupe, and Robespierre made a speech in 
his defense: 

I request that you consent to make these grievances against him 
[Danton] more specific. No one speaks? Well then, I will do it. 
Danton ! You {tu) are accused of having emigrated; they say that you 
got away into Switzerland; that your illness was feigned in order to con- 
ceal your flight from the people ; they say that your ambition was to be 
regent under Louis XVII. ; that at a certain date everything had been 
prepared for proclaiming him; that you were the chief of the con- 
spiracy; that neither Pitt, nor Coburg, nor England, nor Austria, nor 
Prussia was our real enemy, but that you alone were.-^ ' 

The tone is ironical. The imphcation is that the charges are so 
many, so contradictory, and so absurd that they refute themselves; 
the implication is that these are commonplaces with which everyone 
is familiar and which no one believes. It may well be that Robes- 
pierre's speech had a hostile intent ; that he wished to repeat once 
more these charges that they might be kept alive against the day 
when they could be used. But for our purpose the significance of 
the speech is the same in any case; and that significance is that in 

^^ Life and Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris, II. 261. The queen 
appears to have relied upon Danton during the crisis of August 10. C/. Beau- 
chesne, Louis XVIL, I. 182; Lafayette, Mhnoires, III. 376; Madelin, Danton, 
p. 99. See also the Courtois narrative given below, pp'. 37-38. 

29 Aulard, Jacobins, V. 543. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 35 ' 

December, 1793, the story that Danton wished to be regent under 
Louis XVII. was a famihar commonplace which could not be taken 
seriously. 

Six weeks later this old story of a project to proclaim the 
dauphin is related by Couthon as something recently unearthed. 
There has recently been discovered, he writes on January 18, " an 
infamous project, of which the object was to have been, at that time, 
to drive out the Mountain deputies, to deliver Marie Antoinette, 
who was then at the Conciergerie, and to proclaim at once the petit 
Capet king of France".'"' Danton is not yet connected with this 
newly discovered project; but by April Danton has been found to 
be the prime mover in it. On April 5, the last day of Danton's trial, 
Couthon writes that the plan was " to go to the Temple, take out 
the child Capet, and have him proclaimed, as had long since been 
decreed by Danton (the Chancellor), who, within a few hours, will 
be the guillotined".^^ Gouverneur Morris now recalled the letter 
he wrote in December, 1792, in which, he says, " I mentioned the 
plan of Danton, adding that I believed that it had never been wholly 
abandoned. His late execution will show that faith to have been 
well founded. "^^ About the same time he writes: 

Danton always believed, and . . . always maintained, that a popular 
system of government for this country was absurd; that the people were 
too ignorant, too inconstant, and too corrupt to support a legal admin- 
istration ; that, habituated to obey, they required a master. . . . The Dan- 
tonists supposed, that in want of respect for the rulers, the people would 
readily turn on the little prisoner in the Temple, that enthusiastic senti- 
ment so congenial to the heart of man, so essential to that which beats 
in a French bosom. ^^ 

Four months later the story is repeated, with variations, by 
Mallet-du-Pan. August 3, 1794, he writes, apropos of Billaud- 
Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, Robert Lindet, and the Conventionnels 
who overthrew Robespierre: 

I know that their ultimate thought tends to a counter-revolution, but 
made in their own manner, and not in that of the Emigres and Mr. 
Burke. Their leaders were united with Danton, executed for having 
intrigued to proclaim the king Louis XVIL and M. Malesherbes regent. 
They would have nothing to do with Monsieur, or M. Count d'Artois. 
Probably they were leagued with the Constitutionals and Federalists.^' 

so Correspondance de Georges Couthon, p. 284. 

s'-Ibid., p. 320. 

32 Life and Correspondence, II. 427. 

33/fc«., p. 424. 

34 Mallet-du-Pan to the Earl of Elgin. Hist. MSS. Comm., Fourteenth Re- 
port, App. v., p. 616. 



36 Carl Becker 

It is no longer Danton alone who would have proclaimed the 
dauphin, but Collot and Billaud, the very men who were the first 
to denounce Danton for this crime; it is no longer Danton alone 
who allied himself with the Girondins, but the very men of the 
Convention who destroyed the Girondins. 

It needs no great insight to detect in the history of this story 
the familiar operation of the revolutionary psychology which at- 
tributed in succession, to each faction as it was brought to the 
scaffold, the stock charge of royalism. Who indeed was not 
charged with royalism? If we are to believe official denunciators 
and the records of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the most prominent 
royalists are to be found among the leaders of the Revolution: 
Barnave, Dumouriez, Lafayette, Philippe figalite, Brissot, Roland, 
Madame Roland, Hebert, • Danton, Robespierre — all , good patriots 
in their day. "As for the proclamation of the young Capet king 
of France ", Lenotre very justly says, " it was, in this terrible epoch, 
an accusation so banal and so current that it had come to be a 
commonplace."^^ If the charge against Danton is more precise than 
it is against others, the explanation is doubtless that in August, 1792, 
he had perhaps actually proposed a regency in behalf of the dauphin ; 
a proposal which, legitimate enough at the time it was made, was 
remembered against him throughout the Revolution, being, so to 
speak, redated to suit any desired occasion. It is this charge, which 
in December, 1793, was so banal that no one believed it, and which 
in April, 1794, was without further proof sufficiently convincing to 
send Danton to the guillotine — it is this old story, and no more than 
this, that Boissy d'Anglas related in his memoirs, with the addition 
of a few details which the passage of time perhaps had enabled him 
to recall. 

In the course of years another story, somewhat related to the 
eld one, made its appearance. The source of this new story is E. B. 
Courtois. It will be remembered that in 1816 Courtois tried to 
make his peace with the Bourbon government, and that the govern- 
ment, instead of granting him the amnesty he desired, seized and 
carried off his papers. In 1833, his son, Henri Courtois, having 
failed to induce the government to return to him his father's papers, 
brought suit to compel their restoration. The suit failed ; and in 
1834 Henri Courtois published a curious brochure, now rather rare, 
entitled L' Affaire de I'ex-Conventionnel Courtois. In this work, as 
in his previous correspondence with the government, he endeavored 
to make out that his father — his father, who had voted for the 

35 Vevue des Deux Maudes, Jan. i, 1920, p. 132. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 37 

death of Louis XVI. — was a royalist sympathizer even during the 
Revolution. Referring to the fact that his father had carefully 
preserved the documents relating to Marie Antoinette, he says: 

One can the better understand this conduct when one knows that an 
audacious project for carrying away the queen was to have been at- 
tempted by Danton and my father, who was the soul of the affair. 
Marie Antoinette and Madame Elizabeth were to have been carried off 
by main force from the Temple, and transported to a foreign country. 
The proof of this fact is in one of the Danton letters which was seized 
by the police. The means of execution are there described, and they 
reveal that characteristic audacity which distinguished that energetic 
man.^** 

This version rests on the word of Henri Courtois, which is, it 
seems, to be taken with caution. ^^ He refers to a letter of Danton 
among his father's papers which were seized by the police in 1816. 
This letter is probably not now in existence f^ but in some rough 
manuscript " notes " which the elder Courtois prepared from the 
papers in his possession we find the following account of a plan 
which is undoubtedly the one referred to by Henri Courtois : 

A short time before the loth of August [1792] Danton was admitted, 
with the knowledge of the king, to the Tuheries, by the Queen Marie 
Antoinette, vv'ho seemed not to realize the perils that menaced her. The 
future appeared to her so far from alarming that in dismissing Danton 
she said to him gaily : " Ah, M. Danton, if we are not well-behaved it 
will be necessary to shut us up in some prison for a few months." . . . 
Danton, who was saddened lay this dangerous security, assured the 
Queen, in taking leave of her, that whatever happened he and his friends 
would watch over her and her children. [He relates that the Duchesse 
de Choiseul, soon after the execution of the king, determined to rescue 
the queen on account of the menacing attitude of the Commune.] With- 
out hesitating, I entered into her plans {je m'associai a scs idees), and 

36 I have not seen H. Courtois's book. The extract above is taken from 
the Inlermcdiaire des Chercheurs, XXII. (1889) 195, 

3" Cf. Favret, " Proces des Papiers de Courtois ", Remie Historique de la 
Revolution Frangaise, VI. 212; and Welvert, Lendemains Revolutionnaires, p. 
249 ff. 

38 It seems not entirely clear what became of the Courtois papers, but it 
is likely that many of them v^ere destroyed in the Paris fire of 1871. Cf. La 
Grande Encyclopedie (art. Courtois) ; Intermediaire des Chercheurs, May 30, 
1904, p. 779. The so-called Robespierre papers taken over by t.he commission 
of which Courtois was secretary in 1794, and which presumably made a con- 
siderable part of the " Courtois papers ", were published in three volumes in 
182S: Papiers Inedits troxives chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc., sup- 
primes ou omis par Courtois; precedes du Rapport de ce Depute a la Conven- 
tion Nationale (Paris, 1S28, 3 vols.). According to Tourneux, the editor was 
Denis-Alexandre Martin, who left a part of the original papers to Jacques Char- 
avay. Tourneux, Bib. de VHisf. de Paris, vol. I., p. 392, no. 4207- 



38 Carl Becker 

Danton, to whom I recalled the promise he had made to this unhappy 
princess, promised to aid us. The entire Convention was averse to the 
projects of the Commune, but from fear they left the way clear to the 
encroachments of this power. . . . We attempted for some time to 
arouse certain members to make a resistance ; not being able to attain 
this end, the project of carrying- away the Queen was definitely ar- 
ranged. . . . The interior of the Temple was won over, and in spite of 
the surveillance of the Commune, two of its members aided us. The 
dispositions were so well made that the alarm would not have been 
given until twenty-four hours after the flight. A few days on'iy were 
wanting for the realization of our wishes, when the Duchesse de Choi- 
seul . . . conceived the design of carrying the Dauphin away with his 
mother. This was adding much to the difficulties and perils of the en- 
terprise, since the child had already been separated from his mother; but 
I at once put my hand to the task. Danton . . . rejected this idea em- 
phatically, and said to me that we were undoubtedly being made the in- 
struments of some dynastic machination or other. " I will no longer 
meddle with it", he added; "do not speak to me again of this affair." 
I allowed this flurry (hourasque) to pass, and shortly after returned to 
the charge by recalling to him his promise made to the Queen, and by 
saying that it would be casting reflections on the Duchesse de Choiseul 
to suppose that she entertained some ulterior idea of a compromising 
intrigue. Danton, greatly agitated, strode up and down the room ; after 
half an hour he said to me : " Make my excuses to Madame de Choiseul 
and continue the preparations. This is a question of preventing useless, 
atrocious crimes : count on me." 

He was so completely freed from his suspicions, so decided to dare 
all, that the next day but one he wrote to me : " My dear Courtois, I 
dined today with some colleagues whom I found indifferent, or prepared 
to submit to the insolence of the Commune. We must therefore hasten 
the denouement. The bearer of this is the trustworthy fellow (brave) 
who will accompany the fugitives ; put him in touch with the one you 
have chosen, and let them get acquainted like boon companions (ef qu'ils 
f assent connaissance' le verre a la main). No luxury, none of that 
bagtgage which betrayed them at Varennes, and all will go we'l. The 
Commune will roar, but this will be the occasion to chastise it and to 
renew the unity of power. Once successful, every one will be for us ; 
if we slip up the contrary will be true, we sha'l have to defend ourselves 
then and God knows what will happen. We must be ready for anything. 
Your friend Danton." 

Everything seemed to favor this project, which was on the po^nt of 
execution when, during the first days of August, the Commune . . . be- 
came suspicious and suddenly transferred Marie Antoinette to the Con- 
ciergerie, where the most careful surveillance was exercised. From 
this moment .all hope vanished ; rescue was henceforth impossible.^" 

The story is very circumstantial. It is known that Courtois was 
on good terms with the Duchesse de Choiseul'; and there are letters 

^^ Intermediaire des Chercheurs, Apr. 15, igoi 
gaise, XL, 462. For the character of the Cour 
Encyclopedie (art. Courtois) ; Annales Revolutioi 
Frangaise, XIl. 806 ff. 



642; La 


Revohttion Fran- 


" notes " 


', see 


La Grande 


■es, V. z< 


9; La 


Revolution 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 39 

extant from the duchess to Courtois in which she declares herself 
to be under great obligations to him for the most signal services.^" 
Undoubtedl)' no one ever suspected Courtois of royalist sympathies 
before 1814, and the obvious desire of the man after that date to 
curry favor with the Bourbons does a good deal to discredit his 
statements. Yet the story can scarcely be dismissed as an exaggera- 
tion due to faulty memory or the desire to present himself in the 
light of a royalist sympathizer. If his story is not substantially 
true it must have been in the main deliberately invented. If true, 
the plot obviously belongs to late July, 1793, just before the removal 
of the queen to the Conciergerie. This was also the exact date of 
the Batz plot. Was the Courtois scheme, then, a part of the Batz 
plot? There are some difficulties in thinking so. We know that 
the Batz plot was betrayed, and that this betrayal was a cause of 
removing Marie Antoinette to the Conciergerie; whereas Courtois 
says it was the removal of the queen to the Conciergerie that caused 
the failure of the plot in which he and Danton were involved. 
Furthermore, Courtois does not mention Batz, or Michonis, or any- 
one else known to have been connected with the Batz plot ; and, on 
the other hand, none of the evidence on which our knowledge of 
the Batz plot rests mentions Danton or Courtois, either as leaders 
or as accessories. Were there then two separate plots scheduled to 
come off at the same time? 

It is quite possible, but for our purpose the point need not be 
determined. It is sufficient to say that even if Danton were en- 
gaged in a scheme to rescue Marie Antoinette (a supposition not at 
all difficult to entertain), his motive was, by Courtois's account of 
it, not to restore the monarchy, but to prevent " useless, atrocious 
crimes " — a very different matter indeed. In any case, the Danton 
letter to the queen, with which we are chiefly concerned, seems not 
to be connected with the Batz plot or the Courtois-Danton plot. 
The Batz plot fell through before the queen was removed from the 
Temple; the Courtois-Danton plot, according to Courtois, became 
impossible of execution from the moment of her removal; yet the 
Danton letter is addressed to the queen at the Conciergerie and was 
written, to the best of our knowledge, two days after her arrival 
there. It is too much to suppose that a third plot could have been 
devised within two days after the event which, according to Cour- 
tois, destroyed all hope of attaining their ends. 

On the whole, therefore, although we may accept the hypothesis 
that Danton was involved in a plot to rescue the queen in order to 

*o Annales Revolutionnaires, V. 23 ff. 



4-0 Carl Becker 

preserve her life, there is no evidence which would lead us to sup- 
pose that the letter in question was in any wa}- connected with that 
plot. Let us then seek an explanation of the letter on the assump- 
tion that, the project of a rescue having failed, Danton was still 
endeavoring to preserve the queen's life by other methods. 

III. 

It is important to note that the date of the letter was probably 
August 4, 1793. Was there at that time any special reason to sup- 
pose the queen might be in danger of assassination? That such 
danger was commonly supposed to exist can be easily shown. The 
period from the middle of July to the middle of August was one of 
very high nervous tension at Paris. Generally speaking, this was 
the most critical stage in the fortunes of the Revolution. France 
was being invaded on every side by the armed coalition of Europe, 
while serious royalist and federalist insurrections existed in the 
north, west, and south. But aside from the general situation, there 
were two special causes of excitement and alarm. One of these 
was the assassination of Marat on July 13; the other was the ap- 
proaching fete of August 10, designed as a solemn celebration of 
the first anniversary of the fall of the monarchy. 

The assassination of Marat was planned and carried out by 
Charlotte Corday alone; but in the public mind it figured as clear 
and ominous evidence of the presence everywhere in France of spies 
in the pay of England, whose object was the overthrow of the Con- 
vention and the restoration of the monarchy. The malevolent in- 
fluence at the centre of this wide-spread conspiracy was thought to 
be the queen; and the popular fury aroused by the death of Marat 
was turned toward her as the ultimate cause of counter-revolu- 
tionary intrigue in all its forms. The popular cry, therefore, was 
for the immediate execution of the queen. On the evening of 
July 14 the Committee of Public Safety was informed by the Com- 
mune " of the existence of groups in which so-called patriots had 
bound themselves, by their declarations, to revenge the death of 
Marat by assassinating the widow Capet and her' son."*^ On 
July 16 some men came before the Convention demanding, what 
Marat had formerly demanded, " that you take steps against the 
prisoners in the Temple ".*^ Throughout this period the popular 

41 Tuetey. op. cit., vol. IX., p. 311, no. loSi. 
i^ Courier de I'&oalite, July 17, i793- 



D anion to Marie Antoinette 41 

hatred of the queen was voiced and inflamed by the scurrilous 
diatribes of Hebert in Le Pcre Duchesne.'^^ 

The high tension occasioned by the death of Marat increased 
with the approach of the proposed fete of August 10. This was to 
be a great day, not only because it was the anniversary of the fall 
of the monarchy, but more especially because on that day repre- 
sentatives from the departments were coming to Paris to lay before 
the National Convention the official returns of the vote recently cast 
in favor of the new republican constitution. On this day they would 
therefore celebrate, not only the fall of the monarchy, but also the 
formal proclamation of the Republic. It was ardently desired that 
the fete should be a great success ; but there was much uneasiness 
lest the enemies of the Republic, royalists in disguise and spies in 
the pay of England, should make use of the popular excitement to 
raise disturbance, organize a massacre of prisoners, and under cover 
of the confusion rescue the queen and the dauphin. The news- 
papers reflect this f eehng of apprehension. " Some feeble minds ", 
says the Revolutions de Paris, " seem to fear this day, and consider 
whether they should not get away from it."** The Journal de la 
Montagne was filled with forebodings : " Let us repeat that August 
10 approaches ; that scoundrels wish to prevent it."*'' In the scarcity 
of bread the Journal saw a royalist intrigue, the work of those who 
wished to " precipitate popular movements, and to prevent the fete 
of the loth of August. Scoundrels whom nothing teaches say under 
their breath that there will be a coup before the loth ; others, more 
adroit but not less dangerous, content themselves with spreading the 
rumor of this coup, with feigning to fear that it may come to pass, 
and this precisely in order to bring it about."**^ The Moniteur 
speaks of the " unfortunate inscriptions along the roads, designed to 
create terror and spread the most alarming rumors ".*' On Au- 
gust 6, Robespierre, at the Jacobins, spoke at length of the English 

*3 Characteristic of Hebert's method of working on the passions 'of the 
populace is his account, real or imaginary, of a visit to the prisons. " Je trouvai 
la Garce aussi insolente que coutume." He says she told h\m : "J'ai des amis 
par-tout et dans la Convention ; ils ont la patte bien graissee pour allonger la 
courroie et pour m'ouvrir, un beau matin, les portes de cette prison. Oh, je 
n'en doute pas, coquine, mais le peuple est la ", etc. Pere Duchesne, no. 2S7, p. 
7. To the queen he attributes the most bloodthirsty purposes, and he makes her 
chiefly responsible for all counter-revolutionary activities. Cf. nos. 259, 268, 
269, 293, 298, 299. 

44 XVII. 42- 

45 July 25, 1793. 

46 July 23, 1793. 

47 Aug. 7, 1793- 



42 Carl Becker 

plots, which he said' had three objects, one of which was to start 
the people to pillaging the stores, another to " lead the people against 
the prisons and to renew the horrors of September ".*^ The appre- 
hension of a new massacre of prisoners was so general that even 
Madame Roland, herself a prisoner at Sainte-Pelagie, heard of it: 
" The tenth of August approached ; they feared, for the prisons, a 
repetition of the 2 September."*^ 

The republican leaders not only feared an uprising, a new 
massacre of prisoners, they wished to prevent it; not because of 
any special sympathy with the prisoners, but partly because such an 
uprising would be the opportunity of royalist intriguers, and partly 
because they wished the celebration of August lo to demonstrate to 
the world that the Republic meant stability, restraint, fraternity, and 
good-will. They wished to demonstrate to the world, and perhaps 
to themselves, that the morale of the people of Paris was perfect 
even in this crisis of the Republic. Couthon, who can scarcely be 
suspected of any sympathy with the prisoners, certainly not with 
Marie Antoinette, assured his friends that "in spite of all the 
manoeuvres of the evil-minded, Paris is tranquil and the fete of the 
loth will pass off joyously ".^° On the 13th he congratulates them 
that such was in fact the case: "The fete of the loth of August 
passed off as I predicted, without any misfortune. The men of 
blood, who had unsheathed their poniards against this great day, 
v/ere so effectively restrained that they were unable to execute any 
of their frightful projects."''^ With respect to this day, the Courier 
de l'£galite expressed the general desire by saying that "the loth 
of August should be the pledge of peace, concord, fraternity, and 
the epoch of general felicity. "^- 

In these days of high excitement, when a m.assacre of prisoners 
was feared by the leaders of the Republic, and when the leaders 
wished for the good name of the Republic to prevent it, we may 
suppose that Danton was no less keen to prevent it than others. If 
Courtois's story is true we may suppose that he was even more keen 

i^ Journal des Debats . . . des Jacobins, Aug. 9, 1793, no. 467. 

■>:^ Mhnoires (ed. Perroud), I. 311. The prevailing idea of tlie danger was 
expressed by Hebert: "Plus de dix-mille ehappes' [echappes] de la Vendee sont 
au milieu de nous pour nous diviser, afin d'empecher la reunion fraternelle qui 
aura lieu le 10 aout ; je sais que Ton medite encore un pillage, afin d'allumer la 
guerre civile dans Paris. Tous les contre-revolutionnaires doivent profiler de ce 
moment, pour forcer la garde du Temple et enlever le petit avorton royal." 
P^re Duchesne, no. 259, p. 7. 

50 Correspondance de Georges Couthon, p. 258. 

51 Ibid., p. 261. 

52 Aug. 6, 1793. 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 43 

to prevent it than others. It is Courtois who tells us that his desire 
to rescue the queen was due precisely to the wish to prevent " use- 
less, atrocious crimes ". But apart from Courtois's story, we know 
that of all the chief leaders of the Revolution Danton was more 
solicitous than any other for the safety of the queen. From as 
early a date as May, 1793, he felt that the Jacobins were being car- 
ried away by a dangerous frenzy. His leading idea was that the 
factional struggles would end by destroying the Revolution; and he 
endeavored to bring about an abandonment of these struggles in 
order that all might unite sohdly against the foreign coalition. " The 
enemy is at our gates also ", he cried, " and we are destroying each 
other! Do all of our altercations kill a single Prussian? "^^ He 
would have saved the Girondins if he could. He was opposed to 
the senseless execution of men on suspicion only, without substan- 
tial proof. The blind fury of the enrages, who saw treason every- 
where and who abandoned political methods for those of the cru- 
sader, left him cold. To drive the Coalition from France, to obtain 
from European governments a recognition of the Republic — these 
were the two cardinal points of his policy ; and to attain these ob- 
jects he would have brought diplomacy to the aid of arms. But for 
the diplomatist seeking concessions from the Coalition, the strongest 
card in the hands of the Republic was Marie Antoinette. Marie 
Antoinette alive was a hostage to buy recognition with ; Marie An- 
toinette dead was but an added incentive to the Coalition to persist 
in the war until the Republic was destroyed. "In sending Marie 
Antoinette to the scaffold ", Danton said, " they have destroyed the 
last hope of treating with foreign powers. "°* 

Thus, in the early days of August, when there was wide-spread 
fear of a new massacre of prisoners, and when all the revolutionary 
leaders wished to prevent it, Danton had particular political as well 
as humanitarian reasons for wishing to protect the queen. But 
why, in order to protect her, should he say to her : " You will place 
on your door these words : Unity, indivisibility of the Republic, lib- 
erty, equality, fraternity, or death"? The reason becomes more 
apparent when we discover that these words, which constituted the 
symbol of the Republic, were words which all good patriots were 
requested to place over their doors. On June 29 the Directory of 
Paris passed a decree to the effect that, " during the month of July 
at latest, the proprietors or principal inhabitants shall be invited, in 
the name of patriotism, in the name of liberty, to have painted on 

53 Fribourg, Disconrs de Danion, p. 626. 

54 Madelin. Danton. p. 25:. 



44 Carl Becker 

the f agades of their houses, in large characters, these words : Unity, 
Indivisibility of the Republic, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or 
Deafh."^^ At the end of July this request had apparently not been 
generally complied with; and early in August the newspapers car- 
ried a special request, coming from the Commune, to all inhabitants 
to see to it that the decree of the Department be carried into effect.^'' 
Nevertheless, it may be said, this was a device for patriots, to 
stand as a symbol of patriotism. Could it be supposed that this 
device, placed on the door of the queen's prison cell, would demon- 
strate her patriotism, or serve to protect her against assassins? 
Undoubtedly not, if the queen were herself to write these words, 
and these words only, on her door. But I think it was not Danton's 
intention that she should write these words only on her door. It 
will be remembered that the letter closes thus : " Signe Danton ". 
What is the significance of the word " Signe " ? It is not customary 
for a person, signing his own letters, to place the word " signed " be- 
fore his signature. It is a word used by copyists, where the signature 
as well as the letter is copied. I think the significance of this word 
in the present letter is this : Danton wished to convey to the queen 
that she was to " place " on her door the words indicated, and that 
she was also to place under them, in order to give them authority, 
these other two words, Signe Danton. It may be of some signifi- 
cance that Danton did not say " you will write on your door " ; he 
said " you will place on your door ", as if what she was to put on 
the door were some material object. In any case, that part of the 
letter beginning with the word " Unite " is distinctly separated from 
what precedes it by a long heavy dash, while at the bottom, below 
the signature, is another heavy dash. It is almost as if Danton had 
wished to say to the queen: This is what you are to place on your 
door, this which I have so clearly, by these heavy lines, set oS by 
itself. Certainly the queen could have carried out the instructions 
given in the first part of the letter quite literally by cutting out the 
lower right-hand quarter of the sheet and " placing " that on her 
door. If she had done so, anyone approaching her door would 
have been confronted with the following, in Danton's well-known 
handwriting, and with Danton's signature attached: 

Unite indivisibilite 
(de la Republique 

liberte egalite fraternite 

ou la mort 

Signe Danton 

55 Lacroix, Departement de Paris, p. 177. 
^f^ Journal de Perlet, Aug. 5, 1793. P- 37- 



Danton to Marie Antoinette 45 

Perhaps it was the intention of Danton that she should do just this. 
In that case the device on the door, with Danton's signature attached, 
would have had the force of an official order; and the meaning of 
the order could not have been mistaken by anyone. 

This interpretation not only enables us to understand how these 
words on the door might have been thought to furnish protection to 
the queen; it also helps to clear up two other points that otherwise 
present some difficulty. I have already said that, it is difficult to 
understand why Danton should have expected such a letter to pass 
through the Post Office iwithout being intercepted. But if his inten- 
tion was that his own name should be used to give a semi-official 
authority to the words, it is not unlikely that he sent the letter with 
the knowledge and consent of Robespierre or other members of the 
Committee of Safety; in which case the postal officials would nat- 
urally have been instructed to pass the letter. Why, in that case, 
the letter did not reach the queen, as it apparently did not, remains 
a question to which no answer is at hand. Some light would per- 
haps be thrown on these questions if one could determine the sig- 
nificance of the word which appears above and to the right of the 
address. It is apparently a signature, possibly Duclos. Whatever 
the word, it may, I should think, have been placed there to indicate 
either that the letter was to be passed without question or that it 
was to be intercepted. A more relevant question is why, if the 
placing of this device on the queen's door was an understood thing, 
regarded as in some measure a semi-official business, the Post Office 
should have been used at all. Why did Danton not go directly to 
the Conciergerie and place these words on the door himself, or send 
someone to do it ? To this I find no answer. 

The other question which this interpretation helps to clear up is 
the question already raised of why Fouquier, if he had this letter at 
the time of Danton's trial, did not bring it forward publicly as an 
effective piece of evidence. It will be recalled that N. J. Paris, some 
months later, at the trial of Fouquier, deposed that Topino-Lebrun 
told him that on the last day of Danton's trial Fouquier and Herman 
showed secretly to the jury a letter " from abroad addressed to 
Danton ". Since no such letter has been produced, and since Paris 
testified, months after the event, not to what he knew but to 
what someone told him, it is at least a tenable hypothesis that the 
letter which was shown secretly to the jury was this letter from 
Danton to Marie Antoinette instead of a letter " from abroad 
addressed to Danton ". Now, if the letter in question was such a 
letter as Paris describes there seems to be no very good reason for 



46 Carl Becker 

showing it to the jury secretly. But if the letter shown to the jury 
was the Danton letter, and if the Danton letter was, as I have sug- 
gested, prepared and sent with the knowledge and consent of Robe- 
spierre or other prominent leaders on the Committee of Safety, then 
there was a very good reason for showing it to the jury secretly. 
In that case, to present the letter in open trial would give Danton an 
opportunity to explain it, which he could very well do. If Robe- 
spierre and Fouquier, for example, knew that the letter had been 
sent to the queen with the sanction of the committees of govern- 
ment, they would know that the only effective use that could be 
made of it against Danton would be to use it secretly ; shown secretly 
to the jury, without explanation, it could be made to seem conclusive 
proof that Danton had had secret dealings with the queen. All 
this is hypothesis ; but it is an hypothesis in the light of which a good 
many facts are made somewhat more intelligible. 

The question of the genuineness of the letter is one which I feel 
incompetent to decide. To' the untrained eye the handwriting seems 
to be that of Danton ; and Professor Burr, whose wide knowledge 
and critical competence have been a constant resource in the prepara- 
tion of this paper, sees no reason to doubt the genuineness of the 
letter on that score. If the letter was forged, the assumption must 
be that it was forged for the purpose of ruining Danton. But on 
this assumption the substance of the letter is too odd, too unusual. 
A forger would have written a letter more specific in its implications, 
more obviously treasonable. If the letter is false, it is, in point of 
form, extremely clever ; in point of content, too clever by half. 
Forged letters are usually commonplace enough ; this one is so nearly 
unique that it is difficult to believe it could have been invented. 

Carl Becker. 



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